May is Small Business Month–but here in St. Augustine, it’s a small business LIFE! We are lucky to have so many amazing small businesses in our little town, and we’re always happy to work with companies and people who face some of the same challenges we do.
In honor of May, we thought it might be nice to highlight some of the small businesses that we support. We highly recommend all of these partners. If you have a similar need, just reach out to them and we are sure you’ll get the same great service we have come to love!
St. Augustine (and a few others) Small Businesses that We Support:
Bath products (bath bombs, shower bombs, sugar scrub, body butter, and hand-poured rich soap). All of these relaxing from St. Augustine Soap Company. We get a delicious smelling box of goodies every month–and use them in our spa baskets, our Relaxing Evening package, and our Wellness Package. Carl and Melissa put love in all of their products, and we love sharing them with our guests!
We get our candles from St Augustine Soap Company as well. They are great-smelling and hand-poured, with clean ingredients. You can purchase one by itself as a souvenir, or you can enjoy it as part of our Relaxing Evening Package. Want to see even more items than we have in stock? They have a great store at 14 H St. George Street. You can usually just follow their bubbles blowing over St. George!
T-Shirts from Sports Corner on San Marco. If you see our team sporting great-looking t-shirts with amazing artwork, you’ve already seen the work from Sports Corner. (You’ve also seen the work of tattoo artist John West, who did the original black and white artwork on our shirts). We also get baseball caps, embroidered aprons, and embroidered napkins from them.
Christmas Ornaments from Hestia Creations. These folks aren’t local, but they are a small woman-owned business that does the best job on custom ornaments! They designed both our Bayfront Marin House flat ornament, and the new ornament showcasing Beachcomber Cottages on Vilano! If you can’t get to our gift shop, you can always email us and ask about having an ornament mailed to you.
Wedding Vendors
Baked items and Wedding Cakes from Sweet Weddings. We have been getting our wedding cakes from Arlene at Sweet Weddings for years now. So we were super excited for her when Arlene and Paolo recently opened a small eatery on King Street–we highly recommend Parfait too! 🙂
Photography
St. Augustine has always been an artistic community, and we have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to local photographers. Our preferred vendor list includes really talented, reliable photographers–they’re the people we want to work with when we need an updated shot of our rooms, or a portrait of one of our employees.
We have been working with Scott Smith at SSS Studios since we bought the inn, and he is easy to work with, and super creative. We’ve used him both for our weddings, and for some of our room photography.
Mark Krancer of Kram Kran Photography has gotten us some awesome drone shots–it is always neat to see his perspective. He has also shot some amazing food pictures for us–we plan to use them in the next edition of our cookbook.
We met Amy Ayers when she worked at the bed and breakfast next door–and we love the way she captures intimate moments for our wedding couples. Life and Love Studio shot some of the first weddings we did (literally about 700 weddings ago now!) and we still love it when our couples pick them. And though we met Chris and Lisa King of King’s Imagery more recently, we love how easy they are to work with too. They’ve gotten some great shots of Sanchez House for us!
As we find additional local talent, we add them to our vendor list–just ask us for an up-to-date listing to see our favorite shutterbugs.
While we’re talking about weddings, we should talk about Lauralee Wade, owner of the San Marco Hair Company and hair and makeup artist extraordinaire! Lauralee is so wonderful with our brides and their bridal parties–she is a true artist and makes everything she touches beautiful!
Decor and More
Artwork. Speaking of artists, we love featuring local artists on our walls and notecards. Many of the prints in our rooms were done by Sandy’s mother, Lyn Moser, who was an internationally known porcelain artist. But we’ve also gotten some beautiful pieces by local talents Martha Ferguson, Gail Beveridge, Jenna Alexander, Jean Drayovitch, and Chelsea Preston.
Want to buy something to take home with you as a great, one-of-a-kind souvenir? Stop by one of the awesome art galleries around town–Georgia Nick Gallery on Aviles Street, St. Augustine Art Association (just down Marine Street next to the cutest apartment in St. Augustine, our Marine Street Apartment),
Business Services
Internet work done by Old City Web Services. They designed the website for our Beachcomber Cottages, and they host it as well. We love working with Cecille and her staff–they never seem impatient, even when trying to explain some confusing part of technology to us.
Printing by Converging Currents (and our amazing rep, Diane Dew). We’ve printed brochures, business cards, and even the beautiful welcome cards we use in our rooms. She works with several graphic artists as well–so if we have an idea without any artwork, she takes care of everything!
Hurricane Clean Up: Angel’s Touch. We’re happy to support this local cleaning/drying company, but dang, we wish we didn’t have to do it quite so often! After a storm, the national chains drive up and down the bayfront offering their services, but we prefer to use Angel’s Touch, as they never hurry the process and always put the health and safety of our guests first! Plus, they’re local…and if we have to spend money on storm clean up, we would much rather that money go directly to someone who will spend it in our local area.
Food!! Glorious, special, small batch food!
Pizza: when we get hungry for pizza (like when we’re all cleaning up after a storm), we order a Chicago style ‘za from our favorite pizza babe, Hillary Lake. Hillary opened Hillary’s Chicago Pizza on Route 1 earlier this year–we love to grab a beer and enjoy one of her deep crust delectables. Her pizza used to be available only through farmer’s markets and home delivery–we love that she has a local restaurant now to keep our cravings local as well!
Island Donuts. You would think that all of the employees at a bed and breakfast would have had their fill of sweets–after all, we make our own pastries for breakfast and we create little sweet bites every night for happy hour. But you’d be wrong. We have an endless yearning for sweet delicious treats. Which is just one reason we love Island Donuts on Anastasia Island. The other reason is that their donuts are interesting from the outside in–we love the strawberry cake donut, topped with strawberry glaze and a topping of delicious crumbs. They have cake and yeast donuts, and lots of interesting combinations.
The final reason is they are a small, family-owned business, and the nice folks behind the counter never seem flustered or tired (and their days are SUPER busy, with long lines of donut-crazed people. The first time we got them was when one of our housekeepers graduated from Flagler College–and we’ve gotten them for every celebration since then. If you like donuts, grab a box to go before you leave St. Augustine!
We appreciate all of our guests who have chosen to spend their precious vacation time at our small business–thank you!! If you haven’t stayed with us in the past, but would like to join the family, you can make a reservation right now! We look forward to seeing you!